1. Field
The present application generally relates to a computer-based system for investment market research. More specifically, the present application relates to a system for researching an exchange-listed product by analyzing: (i) public sentiment, (ii) analyst consensus estimates, and/or (iii) technical analyses of market information for the exchange-listed product.
2. Related Art
Computer-based systems for investment market research have long been used by professional investors to identify potential valuation anomalies among investment vehicles. A valuation anomaly in an investment vehicle is important because it represents potential profit opportunities for investors. In general, a computer-based market research system analyzes a number of input sources, and applies a particular strategy to predict the future value of an investment vehicle. As such, access to holistic market information is important to a computer-based market research system. The accessing of holistic market information, however, poses certain challenges for computer-based investment market research systems.
For instance, a traditional computer-based market research system may not be designed to obtain holistic market information. Instead, a traditional system may obtain, as input, certain technical data including historical prices and financial statistics for a number of exchange-listed products. Technical data provides a historical view of market realities, and allows a market research system to predict stock values by extrapolating trends in the market. The extrapolations, however, may not reflect current public sentiment towards the particular stock, meaning that a future valuation may be based on incomplete market information. As used here, sentiment generally refers to an opinion, emotion, evaluation, or the like, that may range from being positive, to neutral, to negative.
Additionally, traditional computer-based market research systems may not process financial news information that appear in natural-language form. Although multiple sources of news related to a single stock may be funneled into a computer-based data feed, a human reader must still analyze each news article to determine the public's sentiment towards the stock embodied in the news article. The time and cost involved in analyzing a large number of news feeds for many exchange-listed products render the manual processing of news information unfeasible.
Moreover, traditional computer-based market research systems have remained as disparate systems. For instance, it is possible to obtain analyst consensus opinions and estimates from one market research system, and technical analyses of market data for buy and sell signals from another market research system. Because each system is separate, an investor must individually consider the recommendations of each system during an investment decision-making process. There is no systematic record of whether one system has been consistently superior at valuating a specific stock and thus should be given more weight in a future investment decision regarding the specific stock.